Which shows that not only Microsoft can make d.ck moves with their software and support.

<rant>Of course, the software is theirs and both Google and MS can do what they want with it. But if both companies acted with the same mentality in their early years, the computing landscape would have looked very different...no matter how much Balmer would have chanted: "Developers, developers, developers...".

Weren't there also some Google plans to scrap ChromeOS in a year or two, replacing it with their Android product? Now we need only to Apple to come out with 'iOS X' and all of the major OS companies have each only one operating system that drives their phones, tablets, computers and IoT devices.</rant>

It's still not entirely clear what is going on, but for now it looks like Chrome OS is here to stay (if for nothing else, because it's become the leading OS in the US school sector) and it is Android that is going to run on Chrome OS machines instead.

It's already available on developer channels but the reception seems to be quite muted, i.e. people who've tried it don't seem to be blown away by it and many end up using web apps in the browser instead of their Android variants.

P.S. As for ending support for Chrome apps, it's a pity, as there have been some web services such as WorkFlowy that used Chrome apps for providing offline support, which now will disappear, and so those won't be available without an internet connection.

From what I understand, the problem with running local apps on Chrome OS has been the lack of a storage manager, because the original assumption was that all data would reside in the cloud. Many Android apps require local storage so Chrome OS could not support them. That is supposedly going to change by the end of this year with a local storage manager being implemented in Chrome OS. Apparently this requires some kind of hardware support, which means older (and less powerful) Chromebooks probably can’t use it, so Chrome apps will continue to be supported by Chrome OS “for the foreseeable future” according to Google. How foreseeable is anyone’s guess.

Eventually, Google expects most, if not all, Android apps to work with Chrome OS and I would guess that at that point ONLY Android apps will be supported on all Google platforms.

The idea here is to have a single store through which all apps are distributed, which is also what Apple is trying to accomplish with the convergence of iOS and MacOS, and I suspect is also where Microsoft expects to go with Windows 10 (probably justified as for “security” purposes). This will allow Google/Apple/Microsoft to monetize their operating systems by collecting a tax on every app sold.